Bill Berkowitz
July 22, 2005

At Russo Marsh & Rogers the "truth" is always on tour

Helping Move America Forward report the good news from its "Truth Tour" in Iraq, and working on PR for the Kurdistan Regional Government, has given the California-based firm an opportunity to shape public opinion one story at a time

The so-called "war on terrorism" has been good to Russo Marsh & Rogers (RM&R), Spinning the Truth the Sacramento, California-based conservative lobbying and public relations firm. These days, it has a lot on its plate, including the recently completed "Truth Tour," and a new contract with the Kurdistan Regional Government.

The "Truth Tour" -- a seven-day carefully calibrated trip to Iraq by a group of conservative talk-show hosts -- was intended to spread the "good" news about what is happening on the ground. The tour was organized by Move America Forward (MAF - website), an organization that, according to the Washington Post, owes much of its existence to the good offices of Russo Marsh & Rogers.

According to an entry at SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media & Democracy (website), in June 2004, RM&R "formed a front organization called Move America Forward… 'to stand up and support the brave men and women of our Armed Forces.'" Sal Russo, who began his political career as a special assistant to then-California Governor Ronald Reagan in the late 1960s and who later founded his own political consulting firm called California Capitol Consultants in 1976, is a member of Move America Forward's board of directors and is listed as "Chief Strategist" at the MAF web site.

SpinWatch reported on July 6, that the "Truth Tour" was also in part sponsored by "the newly created Office of Media Outreach, a taxpayer-funded publicity arm of the Department of Defense."

The group of conservative talkers, led by Melanie Morgan, the co-host of a morning show on KSFO-AM in San Francisco and co-founder of MAF, also included Mark Williams of KFBK in Sacramento, Martha Zoller of WDUN in Atlanta, Michael Graham of WMAL in Washington, Brad Maaske of KMJ in Fresno, and the executive producer of the film, "Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Murderous Reign of Saddam Hussein," and Buzz Patterson of the syndicated RightTalk radio.

The purpose of the "Truth Tour," according to MAF's web site was

"to report the good news on Operation Iraqi Freedom you're not hearing from the old line news media…to get the news straight from our troops serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom, including the positive developments and successes they are achieving."

According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, in 2004, whatreallyhappened.com discovered that Russo Marsh & Rogers was closely involved with Move America Forward: "Using a domain name look-up service," whatreallyhappened.com found the RM&R "established the MAF website. Siobhan Guiney, Executive Director of Move America Forward, admitted that Russo Marsh & Rogers did register the site for them and that the two groups shared a building and a phone receptionist. Not long after the exposé Move America Forward purged all references to Russo Marsh & Rogers from its domain registration, going to so far as to list a Sacramento bar as its registrant phone number at one point."

In a telephone interview with Media Transparency, Joe Wierzbicki, an account executive at Russo Marsh & Rogers, laughingly denied that there was ever any attempt to be secretive about the firm's association with Move America Forward: "There is nothing secret about our relationship with Move America Forward. From the very beginning, it has been Howard [Kaloogian] and Melanie [Morgan's] project and Sal Russo -- a close friend of theirs -- helped set it in motion."

Wierzbicki allowed that Russo Marsh & Rogers has done "all of the [group's] public relations stuff, press releases, and radio and television ads that have been aired to date." He added that Move America Forward "also uses Douglas Lorenz, the webmaster at RM&R as their webmaster." In addition, Wierzbicki pointed out, "RM&R doesn't charge Move America Forward any consulting fees and doesn't receive any retainer from the organization." MAF does "pay for the advertising placements from money they receive from small donors."

When asked whether MAF has received any funding from conservative foundations or political action groups, Wierzbicki said that to the best of his knowledge, "all of MAF's money is generated through their own solicitations, both online and through the mail."

Defending torture and the Reagan legacy and trashing Michael Moore

Last month, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Move America Forward had "launched an 'I Love Gitmo' public support campaign -- complete with bumper stickers -- to support the people operating the embattled detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." In a related matter, MAF has also gone after Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin; completely misconstruing remarks about the admitted US torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, he had made.

Former California State Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian, a co-Chairman of MAF, who also made the trip to Iraq, formerly "led the 'Defend Reagan Committee,' a campaign urging CBS, Showtime, and their parent company, Viacom, to refuse to air a miniseries, titled 'The Reagans,' about the late former President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy," MediaMatters.org recently reported. "Kaloogian attributes CBS's decision not to air 'The Reagans' (which was broadcast on Showtime instead) to the complaints of Reagan supporters."

Last year, in another blind stab at the truth, Kaloogian claimed that the US was "winning the war on terrorism."

In June 2004, eager to discredit Michael Moore's award-winning film, Fahrenheit 9/11 before it was released to theaters, Kaloogian and Morgan led another MAF campaign -- with support from Russo Marsh & Rogers -- urging its supporters to "Stop Michael Moore" by taking "action against the release of his anti-American movie Fahrenheit 9/11."

MAF claimed that Moore's film was "an attack on the U.S. Military, the heroic men and women of the Armed Forces and our Commander-In-Chief." MAF Chairman Howard Kaloogian, told Daily Variety that "Michael Moore has the right to free speech, but so do millions of Americans who find his anti-military propaganda and attacks on our troops offensive."

The Russo Marsh & Rogers website claims that, "When it comes to winning elections, few firms can match…[its] success." Taken at their word, RM&R's record is impressive. It maintains that it devised the campaign strategy that allowed George Pataki, "a little known State Senator" from Peekskill, New York to defeat New York's Governor Mario Cuomo. It "designed a primary strategy" that allowed John Shimkus, Madison County, Illinois Treasurer to win Dick Durbin's vacated his House seat when he ran for Senate, over a popular Democratic State Representative Jay Hoffman.

In addition, RM&R's website points out that the organization "was hired by the California Republican Party to help salvage a sagging campaign to pass Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative [also known as the anti-affirmative action initiative]…[and] in the weeks leading up to Election Day…[it] produced an advertising campaign which saved the initiative."

On the down side of the electoral equation, Russo also headed up Bill Simon's failed gubernatorial race. Simon, the son of President Richard Nixon's late Treasury Secretary and right wing philanthropist William Simon, lost to California governor Gray Davis. Russo later became an adviser to the Recall Gray Davis Committee, which helped remove Davis, resulting in Arnold Schwarzenegger being elected as governor.

Attacking Congresswoman Barbara Lee

One of RM&R's least distinguished efforts was its campaign, albeit a short one, in support of Audie Bock who was challenging Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee. Shortly after 9/11, Lee, who represents the Ninth District in the Bay Area, cast the lone vote in Congress against giving President Bush a blank check to pursue his war on international terrorism. She subsequently received numerous death threats, was branded a traitor by the usual suspects, and received special attention from David Horowitz's chums at the Center for the Study of Popular Culture.

Completely misreading the voters of the 9th District, former Green Party California State Assemblywoman Audie Bock, who had previously won a surprising victory over Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris for a State Assembly seat in 1998, and was subsequently soundly defeated in her re-election bid running as an Independent, saw Lee as vulnerable on so-called patriotic issues. Bock declared herself a Democrat and threw her hat into the ring.

Running under the campaign slogan, "It's OK to Love America," Bock's website was filled with a raft of nasty material. It had been designed for her by Russo Marsh & Rogers. At the time, RM&R's Joe Wierzbicki told me that Bock had hired the firm when she became an Independent and it had run her unsuccessful reelection campaign against Wilma Chan.

During the past several years, Russo, Marsh & Rogers has been a media advisor to multimillionaire Steve Forbes, worked with Utah Senator Orrin Hatch on his unsuccessful bid to win the GOP's presidential nomination in 2000, and helped steer Matt Fong's failed 1998 campaign against Senator Barbara Boxer.

Promoting the Kurds?

In the long run, the headline grabbing "Truth Tour" may prove to be significantly less important than RM&R's contract with the Kurdistan Regional Government, which aims to promote the interests of the Kurds in Iraq. O'Dwyer's PR Daily reported that one of the main goals of Kurdish leaders is "the return of Kirkuk," the oil-rich northern Iraq city populated by Kurdish and Turkmen people. O'Dwyer's also pointed out that the head of RM&R, Sal Russo, is no stranger to international politics, having "worked on the campaign of Violetta Chamorro in Nicaragua."

"Our job" with the Kurds, said Wierzbicki, "is to do a public relations campaign that will essentially thank the American people for supporting the war in Iraq. We will also encourage Americans to visit and invest in the Kurdish region." The project has not yet gotten underway, it is unclear how long the contract will actually run for, and Wierzbicki took a pass on letting me in on the financials: "It's a short term thing because they don't know how long the public relations campaign might go," said Wierzbicki.

RM&R took on this work, said Wierzbicki, because "of all the different groups in Iraq that have a vision for the future, the vision of the Kurds is closest to ours. It's important to recognize that the Kurds are not hostile to the West." In addition, "their vision, belief system and values -- they've had a democratic system in place for a while -- parallel ours."

No doubt, it's "a very messy situation over there and the country is trying to figure out its future. The Kurds would like the rest of country to look at the Kurdish region and see it as a model for the rest of the country."

Wierzbicki added that they are definitely "not advocating an independent Kurdistan."

As for the truth of on the ground in Iraq: On July 13, while members of Move America Forward's "Truth Tour" were issuing a press release about an interview with Iraqi Lt. General Abdul Wader Passim, AFP reported that "the death toll from the suicide bomb attack in a Baghdad neighborhood…[had risen] from 24 to 32." While the Lt. General was telling the conservative talkers that Saddam Hussein had "harbored approximately 4,000 terrorists in Iraq in the six months leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom," AFP reported that "a Sunni Muslim religious official said the tortured bodies of 11 Sunni Arabs, who had been killed execution-style with a bullet to the head, were found in Baghdad…after having been arrested by police commandos two days earlier."

And this from the New York Times two days later: "The insurgency is rising from the rubble…eight months after the American military killed as many as 1,500 Iraqis in a costly invasion [of Vallejo] that fanned anti-American passions across Iraq and the Arab world."